Much in the same way as I’ve discussed the principle of science fiction informing us about information assurance and security it appears a researcher at DefCon talked along a similar thread. I do think rather than Die Hard a better analogy is what we find in Battlestar Galactica. There are lots of stories this week after DefCon and the closing out there. Between drones hacking into your computer and the pathetic pleadings of government types to make sure hackers work for them… I’m pretty disgusted by that last wee bit.
One element from this weeks news that I think is interesting is the number of tabletop and war games exercises that are making it into the news. Usually fairly clandestine it is of some interest to see that particular thread rising up. I’m in the process of writing a flexible exercise of a cyber incident of national significance. So seeing lots of other people suddenly writing them makes me wonder what must be in the water and how do I stop drinking it.
The recent and continuing targeting of police by the different computer criminal groups is becoming a fairly significant thread. The other piece to the targeting thread is the suggested attack against FaceBook specifically. Who knows what will happen on the fifth of November, but I do know that the narrative “The Pentagon can never win a cyber war” isn’t going to be decided easily. I don’t think the Pentagon would lose and if you think back to 2003 and the large power outage of the North East grid even in huge problems not a lot happens. Since the critical infrastructure for standard network attacks is the power grid and nothing happened when it went out why do we assume something would happen now? Enron browned out California on numerous occasions and nothing happened.
With the variety of topics hitting at the end of the week once again editors are cleaning off their desks. The primary interesting things are the use of “cyber attack” to describe a breach and loss of PII at a university, and the fracturing of the Anonymous group (by all accounts a loose collective already).
Monday August 8th
| Want to plan a cyber war? Ask Bruce Willis VentureBeat If you want to plan a cyber war, look no further than the Bruce Willis movie, Live Free or Die Hard. That may sound fishy, but that is what a former government cyber war expert told the Defcon security conference today in Las Vegas. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Airborne cyber attack from hacker drone Khaleej Times LAS VEGAS — Computer security specialists showed off a homemade drone aircraft Friday capable of launching airborne cyber attacks, hijacking mobile phone calls, or even delivering a dirty bomb. Rich Perkins and Mike Tassey built the bright yellow … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
| RI National Guard to open cyber defense facility Boston Globe NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI—The Rhode Island National Guard is preparing to move into a $5 millioncyber warfare facility. The 14000 square-foot Special Operations Training Facility in North Kingstown will provide space for the 102nd Network Warfare Squadron. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Future cyberguardians get training Richmond Times Dispatch In an auditorium temporarily transformed into a kind of cyber war room, 85 “good guy” computer hackers hunched over their laptops for about four hours Friday morning, furiously typing away. To do that, they had to take on the role of hackers themselves … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Operation Shady Rat Brings Attention to Advanced Persistent Threats IT Business Edge (blog) By date: By now, you probably heard the big news from the Black Hat conference: McAfee’s revelation of a massive and ongoing cyber attack called “Operation Shady Rat.” The length and nature of this attack obviously has a lot of people worried and … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
|
||
|
||
| Ribbon-cutting to open cyber-warfare facility in North Kingstown Sunday Providence Journal “This facility marks the Rhode Island Air National Guard as a key player in the burgeoning world ofcyber-warfare,” McBride said. Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Denis Riel said the squadron’s 55 guard members will work in 7000 square feet of highly secure … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Aug 24-25 NITC offers cloud, iPV6, cyber war, m-payments, farming Sunday Times.lk A national-level IT conference schedued to be held in Colombo between the 24th and 25th of this month will showcase a wide and diverse range of topics, from cloud computing, cyber war, social media, data centre transformation, Internet identity and … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Hacker group declares cyber war on US police IBNLive.com AP Little Rock: The group known as Anonymous said on Saturday it hacked into some 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the United States, a data breach that at least one local police chief said leaked sensitive information about an ongoing … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
|
||
| Cyber War Worrywarts TIME (blog) “We could face a cyber attack that could be the equivalent of Pearl Harbor,” he said. Such an attack, Panetta warned, could “take down our power grid system, take down our financial systems in this country, take down our government systems, … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
| Google, Microsoft fight science-citation cyberwar online FierceBiotech IT FierceBiotech IT updates senior biotech, pharma, and IT leaders on how IT advances are shaping clinical trials and clinical research. Get your weekly briefing on clinical trial design and management systems, adaptive trials, eClinical trials, and more. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
| How to Fight Against Cyber Attacks Big Think When the American cybersecurity company McAfee announced it had traced a series of cyber attacks against corporations and governments to China’s mainland, the specter of cyber warfaredrew still closer after independent attacks from hacker-activist … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Five Year Cyber-Spying Campaign, Black Hat, Lead Week`s Security News eWeek The past week’s top IT security news stories include the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft’s BlueHat contest, Patch Tuesday preview, and a five-year long internationalcyber-attack that security experts suspect was directed by China … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| DEFCON Kids: Grooming Next Generation White Hat Hackers International Business Times By IB Times Staff Reporter | August 8, 2011 7:28 AM EDT Some of the most explosive teenage talent in the world is engrossed on the dark art of illegal hacking, waging cyber war on governments and corporations. And then there are also young children who … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
Tuesday August 9th
| Unification Ministry targeted in cyber attack The Korea Herald South Korea’s Unification Ministry was the target of an attempted cyber attack, an official here said Tuesday, as the latest in the string of hacking attacks that Seoul suspects have been orchestrated by its northern rival. Unidentified people tried to … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Iran to US, Israel: Bring On the Cyber War KGO-AM Comstock/Thinkstock(TEHRAN) — Iran is ready to take on the US and Israel in any online skirmish using their “undeniable” cyber warfare capabilities, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee said Monday. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
| New Shots Fired in the Cyberwar Spero News Iran has announced the first phase of its plan to establish a “National Internet,” which critics believe will intensify censorship and further isolate the country, while Radio Farda reports that the regime is mimicking its Facebook page. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
| Sheriff’s department reacts to cyber attack WLOX But, just because the site doesn’t have any credit card information Bowlin said, that doesn’t mean he isn’t worried about a future cyber attack. “The only problem is, if someone would go in and post some inaccurate information,” Bowlin said. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Cyberwar for domestic consumption Wired (blog) Of course certain elements of the American security apparatus are gonna cash in on cyberwar. They always do that. But the Chinese are freakin’ hitting EVERYBODY, they’re raking in data everywhere they can grab it. If the American Internet had a solid … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Big Corporation Workers are Poorly Trained in Cyber Security, say Hackers TMC Net By Ashok Bindra From Sony Corp. to the International Monetary Fund, big corporation have been targets of cyber attack by hackers lately. And the assaults continue despite warnings. One major factor contributing to this increase in cyber attack across … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| McMinn Sheriff Dept. Victim of Computer Hackers WTVC McMinn County Sheriff Joe Guy says his department was apparently one of many victims in a recent cyber attack. Sheriff Guy says a national internet hacking group released information over the weekend that included some data from the McMinn County … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Security Experts Not Surprised by Hacking of 70 Law Enforcement Websites Government Technology 6, and 10 GB of sensitive data was posted online — but security experts say it’s not surprising that the websites were susceptible to a cyber-attack. The hacking collective AntiSec — a combination of Anonymous and LulzSec — hacked into Brooks … See all stories on this topic » |
Wednesday August 10th
| Cyberwar fears: disaggregating the threat TIME (blog) In it he speaks of cyberwar worrywarts and rightly fears that, as the terror war recedes in some priority, new little piggies approach the DoD trough. And as these cyberwar advocates find such a prime target in China, I would note that their efforts … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Why US Will Lose Cyber War The Diplomat (blog) I’ve touched upon the concept of n-dimensional conflict here, and I’m writing a chapter on it for the 2nd edition of Inside Cyber Warfare. In the course of my research, I’ve come across the work of theoretical physicist Basarab Nicolescu who argues … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Cyberwar Threats: New Security Strategies for Governments Advanced Trading Overview: Cyberwar fundamentally changes how government must handle security. Faced with increasingly sophisticated attacks from gangs of cyber criminals and foreign governments probing systems for sensitive data, threats frequently go undetected for … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Shady RAT: The Huge, Scary, Cyber Attack Operation You’ve Never Heard Of Geekosystem by Max Eddy | 12:20 pm, August 9th, 2011 Last week, cyber security firm McAffee exposed a massive cyber attack operation as an object lesson for individuals, companies, and world governments to show that everyone is at risk. In a post written by Dmitri … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Cyber Warfare: Techniques, Tactics and Tools for Security Practitioners Help Net Security Cyber Warfare explores the battlefields, participants and the tools and techniques used during today’s digital conflicts. The concepts discussed in this book will give those involved in information security at all levels a better idea of how cyber … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Hong Kong exchange hit by hackers Financial Times The cyber attack, which deprived investors of important announcements from listed companies, came just hours before Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing, the world’s largest by market capitalisation, announced its interim results. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Xinhua refutes claim that it hacked computers of Taiwanese politician Xinhua 10 (Xinhua) — Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday rejected an accusation by the campaign office of a Taiwanese politician that the agency was a possible source of a cyber attack on it. The spokesperson of the campaign office of Tsai Ing-wen, … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
|
||
|
Thursday August 11th
| Guy Fawkes Night cyber attack on Facebook threatened in video [Updated] Los Angeles Times 5 cyber attack agianst the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook. A single video was published to a YouTube account called FacebookOp, claiming to be from Anonymous that said the group would be hacking into Facebook and taking the site down. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
||
| NRC approves cyber-attack security plan The Mercury By Evan Brandt LIMERICK — A plan to protect Exelon Nuclear’s Limerick Generating Station from “cyber-attack” was approved Wednesday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The need to enhance “cyber-security,” a phrase used to encompass the computers … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Pentagon Can Not Win a Cyberwar Claims Author Wall Street Journal (blog) In a gloomy, and at times clouded, essay in The Diplomat, Jeffrey Carr author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld, says that the US will lose a cyberwar because the Pentagon fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the internet. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Phil Gould’s cyber attack on David Gallop The Australian IT started just before midday with an email from Penrith general manager Phil Gould to NRL chief executive David Gallop. Gould, a long-standing critic of Gallop’s administration, wanted to know why a “doodle” he had made at last month’s NRL summit in … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| A Model Cyber Warfare School Korea IT Times (press release) Unlike conventional warfare, one click could incapacitate the whole financial system in a cyber war. An evil hacker could destroy everything on the network such as an airports control system using a malicious code like Stuxnet. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Bono Mack asks for briefing on cyber-attack The Hill (blog) chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, requested a briefing Wednesday from security firm McAfee about a massive cyber-attack the firm identified last week. The attack, dubbed Operation Shady RAT, … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Q: Why do defenders keep losing to smaller cyberwarriors? Register Contrary to conventional wisdom, the damage from cyberwar can kill people, and those who wage it aren’t as anonymous as most security experts and military advisers claim, Dave Aitel, CEO of Immunity said during a talk at the 20th Usenix Security … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Offensive Cyber Tools to Get Legal Review, Air Force Says Secrecy News (blog) Even the most highly classified offensive cyberwar capabilities that are acquired by the Air Force for use against enemy computer systems will be subject to “a thorough and accurate legal review,” the US Air Force said in a new policy directive (pdf). … See all stories on this topic » |
Friday August 12th
| Iran gearing for ‘cyber war‘? Ynetnews Iran’s Information and Communications Technology Minister Reza Taghipour accused Israel on Friday of “unmatched cyber terrorism” against nations the world over. Israel, he stated, “Ranks first in cyber terror across the globe. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Alberta Tory leadership candidate victim of cyber attack Calgary Herald (blog) One of the six campaign teams in the race to replace Ed Stelmach as premier and Progressive Conservative leader fears they have fallen victim to a cyber attack that crippled their leadership website and access to all-important email communication. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Are We Talking About ‘Cyberwar‘ Or Massive Incompetence? Techdirt As Kulawiec noted: We have been treated, over the past few years, to an increasing chorus of hysteria and hype about “cyberwar“. Some of that has come from governments eager to justify their increasing invasion of citizen privacy. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Offline riots lead to cyber warfare, thanks to the Blackberry messenger software Mobile bloom News Research In Motion has created one of the most popular messaging softwares for mobile devices. As with many good things, it can be used for malicious ends. The looters and rioters of London have been using it for a less than worthy cause. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| UWM cyber attack exposes 75k students, faculty and staff CR80News (blog) The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was victimized in a recent security breach, potentially exposing the personal information including Social Security numbers of approximately 75000 students, faculty and staff, according to the Journal Sentinel. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Animal shelters under attack by no kill movement ABC Online The activists have been waging a cyber war against the RSPCA, the Lost Dogs Home and in particular, the Cat Protection Society (CPS). The CPS is the state’s largest cat shelter and admits it destroys 90 per cent of the 12000 cats it takes in each year. … See all stories on this topic » |
||
| Anonymous Split On Proposed Facebook Attack RedOrbit Anonymous members went to pains this week to distance themselves from threatening a cyber attack against Facebook that is reportedly supposed to take place on Guy Fawkes Night in November. The proposed attack, dubbed ‘Operation Facebook’ by the elusive … See all stories on this topic » |
||
|
